THE SEASON OE BROWN LEAVES. 
189 
freedom-loving race of beautiful souls, are only the fruits 
which hang on the branches of the tree of human 
history, and which, in their turn, become the food of 
generations which are to follow them. Each man lives 
to enjoy that which past ages of suffering and trial have 
procured for him, and suffers in his turn that the next 
may derive happiness from his scars and trials. Thus 
all the aims of all the ages are locked in this, and each 
individual man carries within him the germs of an 
infinite progression. 
Bat this will, which wars with instinct, which draws 
him from the wood where he had learnt to worship, and 
thrusts him into the city where he may learn to swear, 
is also a thing of nature, a part of the being which claims 
its possession; and if now acting in opposition to his 
aboriginal impulses, and impelling him to deeds which 
his moments of high sanity—when instinct alone speaks 
—proclaim false to his nature as a whole, acts thus only 
that it may one day harmonize with his whole life, and 
become the helpmate of his highest gifts and powers. In 
the child, where instinct acts almost alone, the aims are 
pure, and there is no food for contrition; in the man, 
where the will is paramount, and the instinct but a 
secondary trait, the soul is covered with blots, and 
embittered with infinite compunctions. Therefore, for 
the soul which dwells within this clay, the ages have all 
passed as successive generations of leaves, the browning 
and falling of which were necessary to the perfection of 
the type running through and surviving them; and for 
the purposes of this day and hour, the browm leaves 
of the human life, the perishing purposes of the human 
